


Desperado

by starduster



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, M/M, Spoilers up to 525
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starduster/pseuds/starduster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?  Or, Takasugi has some things he won't admit, even to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desperado

**Author's Note:**

> Based off The Eagles' "Desperado," more specifically, Kokia's cover of it.

_Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?_

_You been out ridin' fences for so long now_

_Oh, you're a hard one_

_I know that you got your reasons_

_These things that are pleasin' you_

_Can hurt you somehow_

Gintoki Sakata haunts his dreams.  It doesn't matter if he's down the street or a million miles away in the vacuum of space.  There's always something that reminds him of the man he once loved, maybe still loves in some wretched part of his heart. 

Ever since they were kids back in Shouyo's school.  Ever since they were leggy teenagers fighting a war they didn't quite understand.  Gintoki has pervaded his every thought.

_Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy_

_She'll beat you if she's able_

_You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet_

His back hits the wooden floorboards for the millionth time, the air knocked out of his lungs and stars swimming in his eyes.  Through the haze he can see that shit permhead peering down at him bored as ever, one finger lodged in his nose, looking all the world like Takasugi is nothing more than a bug than needs to be shooed out of the room.

He scrambles to his feet, dragging his arm across his face to wipe the blood from his nose, and shoots a final furious look at the fluffy-haired kid before dashing out of the dojo. 

"I hate him," he growls to Zura later, but it's kind of a lie.  More than just his ego and childish pride is drawing him back to Gintoki Sakata, and he's not intent on admitting what that is (though he thinks he might know). 

_Now it seems to me, some fine things_

_Have been laid upon your table_

_But you only want the ones that you can't get_

Painted whores on each arm, tugging him towards one room or another, more pale, thin arms extending from between wooden bars, beckoning, blood red lips whispering sinful words that fall on deaf ears.  His eyes are fixed tightly on the ghostly mop of hair leading a girl down the hall ahead of him.  He wants nothing to do with these women, can’t believe he let Sakamoto drag them to this run-down brothel in some podunk country town.

He can hear the idiot now, laughing that horrendous laugh and babbling on and on as he takes on every woman in the place who hasn't clocked him in the face yet.  And he's sure Zura's somewhere, boring some poor girl to death with his inane prattle, too nervous to touch her. 

But Gintoki smiles at the girl on his arm, and a hand of his has already slipped down to her ass, and Takasugi has to squeeze his eyes shut and force the jealousy out of brain, and it's _stupid,_ because she's just a whore who doesn't give a fuck and won't think about Gintoki again when his hour's up and there's no reason in hell he should be jealous of a prostitute. 

He wrenches himself out of the women's grips and hurries back for the door, wrestling his kiseru out of his kimono and fumbling for a match.    

 

_Desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger_

_Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home_

_And freedom, oh freedom well, that's just some people talkin'_

_Your prison is walking through this world all alone_

He watches the parachute get smaller and smaller, never blinking though smoke and embers are irritating his eye.  There he goes, his conscience whispers, the man you once loved so dearly who's now vowed to destroy you.  His heart aches but the scent of gunpowder and blood drags him back to the battlefield, where the Harusame are tearing apart Zura's forces and being torn apart in turn. 

"We ought to get going, Shinsuke-dono," Bansai says from his side, and Takasugi nods and moves after him towards the safety of the ship, but his eyes never leave the parachute, his past drifting down back to Earth as he flees into the loneliness of space.

For the millionth time he wishes it could have been different.

_Don't your feet get cold in the winter time?_

_The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine_

_It's hard to tell the night time from the day_

_You're losin' all your highs and lows_

_Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?_

He remembers quite clearly, the first time the night terrors came.  It wasn't unusual during the war to hear a man screaming in the middle of the night, but when he himself bolts upright, drenched in sweat and burning with fever, he wants nothing more than to cry until he's eight years old again and had never heard of Yoshida Shouyo.

"Oi, Shinsuke." 

Takasugi's hand darts to his face, scraggly nails clawing at the bandages covering an empty hole that stinks of infection and weeps pus when they change the rags, but another hand wraps around his wrist and gently pulls his own back down. 

"Shinsuke,” Gintoki says quietly again, whispering his name over and over again until Takasugi's eyes focus on sleepy red orbs.  Gintoki loosens his grip on Takasugi's wrist but doesn't let go, and lets his fingers slowly stroke over the skin until Takasugi's breathing slows and his heart stops hammering. 

Moonlight pours in through a high window and together they sit, silent, and Gintoki's fingers never stop the soothing caresses even as Takasugi lies back down, never breaking Gintoki's gaze until he finally falls back into a fitful sleep.

Now, when the night terrors wake him, drifting through the lonely expanses of space on a warship, his mind pulls that memory back to the present, replaying Gintoki's gentle whispering that they never talked about again until sleep overtakes him again.

_Desperado, why don't you come to your senses?_

_Come down from your fences, open the gate_

_It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you_

Underneath the blood pounding in his ears, between the way the sound cuts in and out as his consciousness struggles to slip away from him, he can hear Gintoki screaming.  Gintoki screams a lot, he thinks blandly, breathing shallowly, feeling the hidden blade in the shakujo shift in him, scraping his insides and reminding him that he’s lost again.  He can smell the coppery stink of his own blood in his nostrils as it pools around him.  He's going to die here.

Gintoki is still hollering, and it sounds like it's directed at him.  There's too much noise cramming into his ears to tell what Gintoki is saying, but he wants to think it's something nice, sentimental nothings that are out of place on this battlefield. 

But instead it's something stupid and heroic, some bullshit a shounen manga protagonist would say.

"But the one who understands how he feels better than anyone else in this world is me."

"The one that will both protect and cut down this guy is me."

He hears the other bastard screaming back, and his body moves on its own, despite the pain, despite his screaming nerves, and he hauls himself to his feet.  Like clockwork he yanks the shakujo out of his body, charges forward past Gintoki, takes an eye for an eye. 

He collapses to the ground, adrenaline running thin, when the Yato siblings crash onto the scene.  The world around him narrows down to him and Gintoki, and he's barely aware that Gintoki is holding him.  Not like a comrade.  More like a lover.  His green eye settles on Gintoki's red ones, and he hopes that if he dies now that the warmth in Gintoki's smile is the last thing he sees. 

 

_You better let somebody love you, before it's too late._


End file.
